


Ten Things

by Ashling



Category: Peaky Blinders (TV)
Genre: F/M, Kinda, Oneshot, a lil bit of smut in there, for a pairing prompt that ballooned beyond all sense, one hopes that it's at least a little fun, romcom, self-indulgent but wtf, sweary loose and mildly anachronistic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-27
Updated: 2018-05-27
Packaged: 2019-05-14 17:51:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14774339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ashling/pseuds/Ashling
Summary: This is the part where you’re supposed to blush for the stain on your dress, the teacake at four in the afternoon, the state of your hair, eavesdropping, or looking at him. Or all of the above. But your mind has ascended to such a state of fucklessness that you merely cock an eyebrow at him.He breaks out into a crooked smile of surprise. It’s not so bad to look at, and it reminds you that you are, in fact, a creature with particular interests, even if work lately has restricted those interests to your imagination and your own two hands.





	1. Fantasy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sleepyblinders](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sleepyblinders/gifts).



> a) for Vanessa, who is way more of a sweetheart than this character. I definitely put a bit of my own aspirational bitch in her for no reason other than I wanted to.
> 
> b) it's kind of a mess but oh well!

###  **I. Exhaustion Teacake**

It’s been a long, long day, and your students have been particularly heinous; Jimmy Westin kept trying to take a cookie from little Maisie Fletcher during lunch, and when you stopped him, he chucked a chunk of ham at you. Now you’re walking home, lugging a bag full of schoolwork to grade, with a brownish stain on your cardigan that looks quite a lot like dried blood.

Fuck it. Fuck it, you’ll take the shortcut.

You’ve been told by more than one person not to venture through the heart of Camden Town, but frankly you can’t tell how much of that is real and how much of that is just people hating Jews. And also, you’re tired as fuck. Even if you do get mugged, it might be nice. Being hit over the head would be the perfect excuse to just lie quietly on the sidewalk for an hour or so.

It is when you’re almost out of Camden Town, sweating slightly and at your absolute weakest, when the smell hits you. Intense, almost sweet, it’s unmistakably the smell of fresh bread wafting out the propped-open door of a bakery. You squint up at it; from the striped green-and-white awning to the gold lettering on the windows, it seems almost a little too good to be true, like someone wandered into your heart’s desires and plopped this shop down in front of you for the express purpose of making you miserable.

Dinner’s in three or four hours. And you’ve been saving up for a new dress, because your favorite red one has been slowly turning pink after being washed so many times. But, fucking hell. You inhale deeply.

You go in. The boy at the front notices the stain on your blouse, but says nothing. You, in turn, eye a long loaf with a crust that looks like it’d give you a proper crunch. There’s also another one, darker and faintly shiny, that looks like it’s been braided. Ultimately, you settle on a beautifully iced teacake and pay up.

There’s no tables or chairs anywhere, just a long counter, but you think of the distance remaining to your flat, you breathe in that sweet air, and fuck it. Standing in one corner of the shop, bag on your arm, you tear off a piece and begin to eat, mentally daring the boy to make any kind of eye contact with you. He does not.

Through the door in the back, muffled voices become clearer, as if from men ascending or descending stairs. They’re speaking a language you don’t know (Yiddish? probably?), and arguing, one defensive, one very, very aggressive. Mind half-fogged with pure bready bliss, half-curious, you peek into the open door that leads into the back of the bakery and see two men, one unspeakably enormous, dark-haired one, and one bearlike man made half of beard and half of rage. Halfway through barking something that sounds like an order, the bearlike one glances out at the shop beyond and makes direct eye contact with you.

This is the part where you’re supposed to blush for the stain on your dress, the teacake at four in the afternoon, the state of your hair, eavesdropping, or looking at him. Or all of the above. But your mind has ascended to such a state of fucklessness that you merely cock an eyebrow at him.

He breaks out into a crooked smile of surprise. It’s not so bad to look at, and it reminds you that you are, in fact, a creature with particular interests, even if work lately has restricted those interests to your imagination and your own two hands.

Then the bearlike man barks an order, and the boy at the front hurries to close the door between the back rooms of the bakery and the front of the shop. You shrug. Almost done with the teacake anyway.

 

###  **II. Trouble-**

Once a week is reasonable, right? It seems reasonable. At any rate, the two people most often manning the front, the curly-haired boy from before and his extremely talkative mother, soon learn your name, and you theirs (Ezra and Judith, respectively), and there’s a pleasant if mildly embarrassing familiarity in that. You come to anticipate the divine, doughy smell and your little corner in the bakery with great pleasure, knowing that it’s the one moment in your day that will likely be silent, free from students or flatmates; even the chatty Judith seems to understand, and lets you stand and eat in peace.

The man’s there too, though rarely. Maybe once every three weeks. You watch him, and sometimes he catches you at it, but he doesn’t seem to mind. You catch Judith talking to him animatedly one day, and venture to ask his name. There can’t be much harm in a name. Castles in the air are for yourself and yourself only, right? Anyway, his name is Alfie, which doesn’t appear to suit his usual growling demeanor much, but pairs decently enough with his guffaws. He gives you something to think about that isn’t the news, or your family, or your flatmates, or your students, and though he’s rarely speaking English, his animated ways give you plenty of entertainment. He’s like a walking, talking dime novel with that swagger. And he’s free, or at least comes free with the pastries and bread.

And the beard’s not bad.

This goes on for a few months, and he still doesn’t know your name but that probably doesn’t matter. There’s a golden moment that more than makes up for it, when you look up from your bread and he’s perfectly framed in the doorway, vest unbuttoned, white shirt sleeves rolled up to the elbow, kneading the dough. You decide the heat’s not so bad if it’s making him sweat. You decide this is almost certainly a trap set by some kind of fiend. (Gods you don’t believe in, but little assholes with the power and will to fuck with you seem pretty reasonable.) You decide you’re not going to look away.

He looks up at you, and you don’t move. He looks back down, and gets on with it. But for the next ten minutes or so, he stays in full view, and you don’t stop looking, and poor Ezra keeps his own eyes glued to the newspaper at hand.

As soon as you get home that night, you start to make inquiries. Out of the five girls that you have crammed into one flat, you get lucky with Letty, whose mother is Jewish.

“Do you know an Alfie?”

“Alfie what?”

“I don’t know. He works at this bakery in Camden Town, built like a barrel.”

“Jesus Christ, Vanessa.”

“What?”

“I knew you’d get after a man eventually. Tessa told me it’s been two years since the last, but him?”

Only two weeks ago, your principal threatened to fire you for not being able to handle the workload, even though your workload has doubled since Ms. Spinelli suddenly quit. So yeah, you went behind the school and drowned the very last fuck you had to give in the river. Her reaction only has you amused. “What’s the problem? He’s not married. Did he kill his wife?”

“Not quite.”

“He’s got the clap? He votes Tory?”

“No.”

“Then what?”

“I wouldn’t call him a gangster,” she concedes, “but he runs around with that type. He’s killed a man. And everyone knows the bakery’s not really a bakery.”

“Isn’t it? The bread there tastes a lot like bread.”

“It’s a front for something.”

“Mm.” Alright, so now he really is straight out of a dime novel, and you’ve got more fodder with which to entertain yourself. What could one do in a fake bakery? Forge money?

“Oi. Vane.”

“What?” You look over. “Oh, you thought that was going to scare me off him?”

“Doesn’t look like I succeeded.”

“Nah.”

You can feel her reassessing you, and obligingly pull a lazy smile.

“Quiet girls have the most surprises, huh,” she says after a second.

You shrug. “You know where I come from?”

“Orphanage, same as the rest of us.”

“Yeah, but when I turned fifteen, they sent me to the Stoker place. You know what they say about Stoker’s?”

“I’ve heard it’s got a reputation.”

“Stoker’s was for the troublemakers and the troublefuckers.”

“Am I supposed to guess which one you were?”

You smile.

 

###  **III. Cocktail (The Wrong Kind)**

They hire a new teacher. Ms. Solokov, and as you walk home that day, you feel a sense of relief mixed with trepidation.

Truth is, you love your students, the grimy, shouty little assholes, because they give you so much trouble. You wouldn’t know what the fuck to do with a simple, quiet life; you feed off the chaos, on trying to control it, most of the time, wrangling all of them into learning whether they like it or not.

You’re tired of looking and feeling like a wreck, of course, but with things much tamer, you’re starting to worry about the boredom. Your off days have gotten significantly less entertaining since Tessa got married; she no longer drags you to hip spots around town, and you try (and fail) to not resent Craig for that. Anyways. It’s looking like a boring weekend.

This particular Friday, you have a simple roll, not even toasted, not even with butter. You tear tiny pieces off it and savor the taste as it melts on your tongue. Alfie’s in the back, but you only caught a glimpse of him once, so he’s probably down in the basement, so you turn your imagination to the people outside, making up increasingly ridiculous or tragic stories to explain the baby in that pram (dead mother! Horrible rich father! Will certainly become a bratty heiress!) or that newspaper-throwing boy (destined to become a great writer! Cut down too soon in a foreign war!) or that tall, angry-looking fellow in the long coat (secretly a terrible husband! Soon to be brought down by his crafty wife!) until the tall fellow stops and pulls a bottle out of his coat.

And that’s not too out of the ordinary (a man? Drinking? gasp.) but then you see he’s stuffing something in the bottle, and then out come a lighter and _oh shit,_ that’s a rag about to be lit.

“Oi!” you bellow, because there’s no time to do anything, and Judith ducks down behind the counter as you huddle in your corner, wishing you had something more solid than a dinner roll to chuck back. Fuck there’s a lot of wood in here.

Then it gets worse. The man takes out a revolver and shoots twice, shattering the large windows in a spray of glass, then cocks back his arm, the Molotov cocktail ready to go. Then a third shot blasts through the air, and red blossoms through his gray coat, and he crumples to the ground. The bottle shatters on impact, splashing oil all over him. The rag catches him on fire, and he spends his last minute on earth very noisily.

You’re distracted from the blackening corpse by a yelp. It’s Judith, dismayed, darting into the backroom past Alfie, who’s standing there gun in hand. You know you’re supposed to be scared, but it’s not a bad image, white shirt open at the throat and all. He looks at you. You take a bite and chew slowly. You don’t look away.

You’d be happy to stand there forever, but unfortunately that was your last bite, and. Well.

“Guess I ought to go before the police arrive?” you say.

“Aw, the police don’t care about Camden Town.”

“You seem to manage well enough without them.”

There’s a flash of that crooked grin again. Then he comes around the back of the counter towards you, walking carefully, big boots crunching over the glass. He offers you his hand, the same hand, you can’t help but notice, that held the gun. You take it.

This whole delicate-damsel thing would work a lot better if you had worn some fucking heels, but your walk to work is considerably too long for that nonsense, so instead it’s the _crunch crunch_ of flats over glass. You use him for support even though you don’t need to. His hands are rough and you’d like to know where the calluses come from. You wouldn’t mind feeling them a bit more.

He walks you over the glass, to the door. A few gawkers have begun to cluster in the windows of the dress shop opposite. There’s no more glass, so you relinquish his hand.

If this is a dime novel, you’ll play the cowboy if you want to. And you want to, even if you haven’t got a gun. You know the right lines for the damsel--gratitude, mostly--and they’re fucking boring.

“Till next week, Alfie,” you say, and you leave before he can answer.

You don’t know if he’s watching you go. You hope he is, but you’re feeling pretty pleased either way.

 

###  **IV. Style/Busy**

Now that your workload has lessened, you’ve got the time to spare to, oh, not just dunk yourself in a tub of water and scrub like mad before you pass out on your bed atop still-wet hair. No, you’ve got time to use those curlers. Time to slip a tube of lipstick in your purse. Time to take your savings and get that new dress for yourself, a sensible choice, blue printed with tiny flowers, fake pearl buttons for a touch of, oh, don’t call it class, but maybe style. (You know it flatters the curve of your ass, too. There’s that.)

The shoes. The shoes are a mistake, and you know it even when you’re putting them on, but damn if those delicate heels don’t make your legs look good. You know they make your legs look good.

By the time you make it to the shop that Friday, your toes are pinched all to hell, but you lean into the pain and order yourself an iced bun, telling yourself that the sugar will make up for it. You eat it slow, so slow, and he doesn’t show up; there’s not the slightest flicker of movement in the backroom, and it’s fucking disappointing. You take to eating about a bite a minute. Tiny, tiny bites. You won’t buy anything else to eat; there’s no dignity in that. But if you can just make this one stretch out for--

A car screeches to a halt in the street outside, and you press yourself into the corner as Judith runs into the backroom. _Not again._ But no, it’s him, jumping out the driver’s side door and walking fast to the door, his white shirt crimsoned by a gash in his shoulder. He barges through the door and pulls up short at the sight of you. Maybe, maybe it was an offense that he forgot about you for a moment, but the look on his face more than makes up for it. Yeah, there’s a considerable distance between your limp-haired, shit-dressed look and your red-lipped, heel-sporting look. You know you look a proper fashion plate. You know he’d like a look underneath the blue.

You raise an eyebrow.

He starts, remembers there are other things he needs. Fumbles for the words.

“I take it you’re busy?” you prompt.

“You could say that.”

He’s dripping blood on the floor, and there’s a pleasure in the fact you don’t have to give a damn about it. He’s no child that needs to be told to sit down and get bandaged up. He’s a man, and if he’s going to run round wounded, that’s his goddamn choice.

“Go on, then,” you say.

He disappears into the backroom, thunders down the stairs, and emerges minutes later carrying a long black box rather like a violin case, except rectangular and far, far too long to be for a violin.

You watch the car careen away, and then you call to Judith, “It’s fine!” Shoving the rest of the bun in your mouth, you chew with gusto and begin your walk home.

 

###  **V. Good People**

Next week, you wear a softer lipstick and ditch the heels, but the hair’s the same and so is the dress. A little effort’s fine. The blackberry scone is sublime. And then, no matter how slow you eat, he doesn’t fucking show.

“He is alive, isn’t he?” you say to Judith.

“Yes, dear.” Bless her, she doesn’t judge you a whit, just says it and gets back to the paperwork she likes to do during slow hours.

“Thanks, Judith.”

The next time you go, you wear what you want: the cute dress, the aggressive lipstick, flat shoes. The newspaper was interesting that morning so you didn’t bother with the hair. You’ve got no expectations, and things are a little lighter that way, albeit a little less exciting.

Due to an extended all-school meeting, you’re dreadfully late and the place is jam-packed, but that doesn’t matter. The shop turns up a delightful surprise for you: a man named Moshe, just a year younger than you, who was trained as a teacher at the exact same time. Who incidentally you couldn’t marry for the same reason you’ve never been able to marry, namely that you’ve never wanted to. But it’s still good to see him again.

All through the line, you talk about your respective schools, and end up hotly debating pedagogical methods, the relative psychological merits of penalties and rewards. Somehow that slips into the relatively modern history of English schools and the influx of lascars and freedmen and loops right back around to the balance of power between the teacher and the parent and then you get a beautiful spot where you’re the only one that can talk because Moshe’s busy ordering two loaves and then you’re so invigorated that you get a small loaf that’s still larger than both your fists put together and far too large for one sitting. And then the two of you huddle in the corner and dip into the ethics of bodily autonomy and you know you’re gabbling like an idiot but fuck it’s been a long time and you’ve missed all this arguing--

“Y’know, me,” rumbles a voice behind you, “I vouch for a smack upside the ‘ead. Is that not an option on the table? Because it should be.”

Alfie slides into the conversation, much too close, and on the wrong side. That is, he leans into Moshe’s personal space, and the poor man blanches.

“Mr. Solomons!” He fumbles with his bags in order to get his right hand free, then offers it. “We so appreciated your, ah, your actions regarding the school redistricting. Truly. A disaster averted.”

Alfie shakes his hand too hard and for too long and you’re on the verge of rolling his eyes.

“He’s just getting a couple loaves for his family,” you say. “Wife and three children. We trained together.”

“Oh, do you know Vanessa?” says Moshe, smiling anxiously, shaking out his hand by his side.

“Vanessa? No.”

“Oh.”

But the both of you are looking at each other, you in faint exasperation and Alfie in an irritating mask of benevolence, so Moshe adds, “I should get home, there’s a list of groceries as long as my arm that I still have to pick up. Good seeing you again, Vanessa, very good seeing you, Mr. Solomons.” Then he slips out the door.

Behind you, the rush of the day has petered out to just a couple customers and Judith. It’s few enough for you to talk properly.

“He was nice,” you say. “And he’s a good man, which is rarer. You shouldn’t scare off good people.” Even if they’re good people that you have indeed fucked, thank you very much.

He gives you one of those shit-eating grins. “If they’re good people, they’ve got no reason to be scared of me, innit.”

“We both know that’s not true.”

“Mmh.” There goes one of those undefinable sounds whose meaning is lost in his beard. You choose to take it as a grunt of concession. Then: “Do you always talk that much?”

You shrug. Judith, without looking up from the change she’s counting out, says, “No, she doesn’t.”

You have to stifle a smirk at that. So much for the appearance of a private conversation. If Judith knows, the whole neighborhood knows, but it’s not your neighborhood and you can’t bring yourself to care.

“Do you bake?” he says abruptly.

“Would I be here if I did?”

“Would you like to learn?” he says, sardonic and a little slow.

“What would it cost me?”

“Oh, whatever you can spare.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”


	2. Real

###  **VI. Fast/Slow**

The sun has just set as you make your way to the shop. There’s not many people around; most are finishing up dinner with their families. The shop has been closed for about an hour now, but the backroom is lit and when you try the door, you find it unlocked. You lock it after you.

The backroom much larger than you previously thought, a cavernous space complete with what seems like miles of countertop. Alfie’s in a chair in the back, heels up on a table, reading the finance section of the newspaper and smoking a cigarette. When you come in, he chucks the cigarette in the ashtray and gets to his feet.

“Vanessa!” he cries. Then he stops short. “Did you bring a gun?”

“No.” You hand over your purse to prove it. “Are you disappointed?”

“Very fuckin’ disappointed.”

“Then get me one yourself. I don’t have new-gun money.” You reach over, pick up the cigarette, and have a puff. It’s an old vice of yours, not one you indulge often. But tonight’s a night for vice, clearly.

“You have teacake money.”

“I have my priorities in order.”

Up close and in private, you’ve got the ability to try and figure out whether his eyes are green or blue. So you do. _Green,_ you decide, and then you sweep your eyes over the rest of him.

“Go on and bake,” you say. “I’ll watch.”

“What ‘appened to student participation?”

“I imagine that’ll come later on.”

You perch on one long countertop, smoking and swinging your heels, as he begins measuring and mixing the dry ingredients. Well. You say measuring, but he’s mostly eyeballing it.

“So you’re a teacher, eh?” he says.

“Yes. Do you want to be taught?”

“Tell me about the Italians.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Everything in the last twenty years. Politics, culture, London immigration history.”

It is flattering that he thinks you know all that. And you do know all that, having taken particular interest in modern immigration, but there’s just one thing.

“Are people going to die?” you say.

Halfway through cracking an egg, he looks up. “People die every day, Vanessa.”

“Are Italians going to die?”

“Italians are people, stands to fuckin’ reason.”

“Three of my students are Italian.”

“Any kid young enough to be your student probably has at least another thirty years on ‘em.”

You consider this. “All right, I think you’ll be most interested in the Sicilians…”

And you’re off to the races. You talk through the ingredients mixing, you talk through the dough getting kneaded (your favorite part), and then he puts it in a bowl and you’re still talking and--

“Doesn’t that lot go in the oven?” you interrupt yourself.

“I thought you were fucking with me when you said you didn’t know how to bake.”

“Well, surprise.”

“It needs to rise.”

“Needs to what now?”

“It’s going to grow until it’s twice the size it is now.”

“Shit, I didn’t know baking was _interesting._ ”

“Yeah?” He scratches his jaw with a couple beringed fingers. “You’ve seemed pretty interested.”

“Come here,” you say, and he does. “How long does it take to rise, do you think?”

“Half an hour, forty-five minutes.”

“I can think of some ways to pass the time.” You spread your legs a few inches.

He grins, and settles himself between them, the fabric of his work trousers rough against the insides of your thighs, the metal of his rings cold on your knees, his right thumb tracing tiny circles on your left leg, warm. “You’re a fast little thing, aren’t you?”

“Little, maybe. A thing, no. And Alfie?”

“Mmh?”

Hooking your thumbs in his belt loops, you grasp his hips and pull him forward till he’s flush against you, your heels tucking him in closer. “Nothing about this has been fast. I’ve been wanting you inside me for four months now, and you’ve wanted the same for nearly as long. Four months of thinking about it, and nothing stopping you, four months of wondering what you’re going to taste like, four months of only my own fingers and a--”

He kisses you hard and you smile your victory into it till the smile melts under heat, his hands rucking up your skirt, yours frantic at his belt buckle, hips rolling and words vanishing till his rings clatter off onto the countertop, he slips a hand into your panties, and the kiss suddenly ends.

The expression on his face, the surprise there, followed by gratification? Delicious. He brings his fingers up to his mouth to taste, and that’s a sight, isn’t it? He must know it is, because you catch a glimpse of pink tongue, and that was entirely unnecessary for the purpose.

“You did that,” you admit to him. “Don’t get--” Your fingers dig into his shoulders when you feel him pressing into you. “--fucking arrogant about it.”

“Too late,” he murmurs, and then his mouth is on your throat and his fingers stretch slow and perhaps there’s a rebuttal to that but you can’t be bothered to think of it when you can run your hands through his hair instead.

He fucks you like you expected, hard and fast, the edge of the counter cutting into your thighs, the stretch in your cunt more than worth it, and his mouth travelling everywhere, an unexpected bonus. It’s good and then it’s too good to be true, because despite your best attempts at clinging, he pulls away.

Now it’s his turn to enjoy the expression on your face, but then, there are options here. You have options.

“I’ll do it myself,” you say, and sure enough one finger slides in easy, then two, and you know yourself, know just how to crook your fingers and find the right spot and he’s drinking in the sight like a man in a desert but before you can hit a proper rhythm, his hand closes over your wrist.

You make a desperate sound down low in a part of your throat you didn’t even know was capable of making noise. “There are easier ways to make me fight you.” Your voice is ragged to your own ears.

“If nothing about this has been fast, with half an hour left, why start now? I can take care of you. Are you going to let me?”

You rest your head against the wall, taking in the sweat-soaked sight of him. You’re tempted to just pull him in, knowing you could persuade him in two seconds to fuck you again. He’s good at bluffing, but his cock’s more than enough evidence of impatience.

Curiosity has always been your weakness, though, and he’s not specified how he wants to take care of you.

“Yes,” you say.

He kneels.

 

The insides of your thighs are red. You’re going to have beard burn there for a couple days. It’s worth it.

 

###  **VII. Lend Me Your Rear**

He shows up at your front door, which is a mistake. Not one he could’ve known, because you haven’t talked to him about your flatmates yet, but still a mistake.

You don’t bother asking how he got your address.

“What can I do for you?” you say.

A wolfish smile spreads across his face. “I was thinking--”

You open the door much wider, revealing your roommates, four other women, listening in unabashedly. Letty waves.

He waves back.

“I, ah, got you a book,” he says.

“Really.”

But he has. It’s packaged in brown paper, but you can feel that it’s a thick hardback.

“The Bible? That’s very sweet of you,” you say.

“Right.” He reaches to take it back, but you’re too quick.

“I’ll open it later.”

“When?”

“When you drive me to your flat, in about two minutes. Let me get my purse.”

He doesn’t look particularly happy with that, but he can’t object, can he? Not when he’s already butted into your place.

His flat is odd, clearly not meant for visitors, small and very full, with two bookshelves and a massive bin holding a ridiculous number of unwashed clothes, plus six apples on the kitchen table for no apparent reason.

You gesture at the shelves. “What’s all this?”

He shrugs. “Got a taste for it in prison. Quakers used to donate old shit, and I was bored.”

“Are you still bored?”

“Sometimes.”

You move a pile of paperwork from a chair to the floor, then sit down and start tearing at the brown paper packaging.

“Volumes one and two of Gibbons’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.” You look up. “Not quite what I was expecting.”

“What were you expecting?”

“The Kama Sutra?”

He laughs. “I have that around here somewhere.”

“Save it for a rainy day.” You trace the edge of the cover with one finger, then flip it open to a random page and begin to read. “The troops fought like men interested in the decision of the quarrel; and as military spirit and party zeal were strongly diffused throughout the whole community, a vanquished chief was immediately supplied with new adherents, eager to shed their blood in the same cause.” You look up and grin.

“Wot?”

“The Italian information wasn’t just because Italians are going to die. You get off on this, don’t you.”

“Is it so unusual to want someone with a full head?”

“As opposed to an empty one? No, not unusual. But gratifying.”

“How gratifying?”

“Come over and find out.”

It’s nice to finally fuck on a bed for once. Afterwards, you drape yourself across his back, tracing the scars there.

“You’re Shakespeare, you know that?” he says.

“Yeah?”

“Though she be but little--”

You bite his shoulder.

“It was a compliment!” he protests.

“She is fierce? I know.” You press your lips to the bitten skin. “It was a thank-you. I’m fond of Beatrice.”

He checks it over. Sure enough, you didn’t break skin, but there are marks on him now. He makes a face.

“If I knew you were so delicate…”

You both laugh.

“You remind me of Shakespeare too,” you say.

“Yeah?”

“You want to guess?”

“I am a Jew.”

“I’m aware, Alfie.”

He grunts; you grin. “I take it that The Merchant of Venice was one of the old things donated?”

He nods.

“Go on, then.”

“I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions?” At first, he starts lightly, trying to inject irony in his voice, distance, but it doesn’t work; the rhythm of the words carries him along. “Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed?” You can see, now, why Moshe called him Mr. Solomons and not Alfie; why he seems able to command the entire neighborhood. You see where the ability to ignore his own spilled blood comes from.

The rest of the speech is one long exercise in seeing how low his voice can go, and at the very last line, he strokes your cheek, tender like he’s never been, a menace in it that makes your mouth go dry.

“The villainy you teach me I will execute,” he murmurs, “And it shall go hard, but I will better the instruction.”

You didn’t think that you could be surprised by wanting him in any kind of way again, but here you are, thighs still sticky from the last time and you want him, you want him, _you want him_. And you take him, giving what you received, bruising but also, also. Taking note when he trembles.

Later, when you’re so worn-out you won’t even lift your head to talk, you say, “You didn’t guess right.”

The truth is, you were thinking about the time a teacher asked for an analysis of Marc Antony’s famous speech and you ended up wanting to fuck him. The ambition, the skill, the bloodlust underneath it all, the wrenching sobs in front of a crowd, flash of white teeth grinning victory in private--yeah, you could ride that ancient motherfucker. Alfie’s not at that level of duplicity, but he’s got the same charisma, the same savagery underneath.

“What was it, then?” he says.

His ego is healthy enough already; it doesn’t need feeding.

“Exeunt, pursued by a bear.”

  
  
  
  
  
  


###  **VIII. A Problem**

“You know what? There should be a problem by now,” he declares.

“Mm?” You lean back in your chair. He likes to monologue and you don’t mind listening.

“The honeymoon’s fucking over, innit.”

“I wasn’t aware we were married.”

“We’re not, but it’s been three months. Three months means we should’ve found a fucking problem. You give any two people three months together, and they should be able to find a dozen problems and go their separate ways, right?”

You eye him suspiciously, but he doesn’t seem to be gearing himself up for a separation; on the contrary, he just looks like he’s pontificating as per usual. You relax. “A problem like what?”

“Like the danger isn’t very fucking sexy anymore now that you’re close enough to get shot if a man comes through that door. Like you’re tired of staying inside and you want to be walking on my arm, like you haven’t seen a share of the profits, like you realize you’ll never get any further in, like you want kids, like you’re fuckin’...worried about saving my soul or some such shit.” Alright, maybe this is not a usual speech. He does look mildly worried.

“That’s a pretty big ego you have there, Alfie,” you say. “You do see that none of it fits, right?”

“I see that, and it’s very fucking concerning, because I’m wondering what brand new three month problem you’re going to come up with. You and that imagination.”

“A finger up the ass is not innovation, Alfie, it’s a pretty common cure for temporary boredom.”

“And the fucking marathon last Friday?”

“That I’ll proudly claim as a personal invention.”

He smiles, and it’s a little terrifying, that. Yeah, maybe he is a little fond of you, maybe you’re a little fond of him, but it’s still two people getting what they want, at the core. That’s what it is.

“Listen,” you say, “If you want a problem, you’ll have to make it up yourself, because I have none. And for the record, there’s a three-month mark for women, too, and it’s wildly different.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” You get up out of your chair and got to sit in his lap, tilting his chin up, beard itchy in your palm. “At three months, he’ll start to think he owns you. You can see this because he’ll start to try to make you marry him, start to get bored and see other women, start to try in bed less and less, start to push you around.”

“You think I’d do that?”

“I think if we’re going to talk about changes at three months, we should talk about how completely unwedded I am to you, in every sense of the word. How I know that the good shit--the nearly unbelievable shit, the way you try to read ahead of me in Gibbons, the loaves you give me when I go, the way you get off on getting me off--how I know that good shit sometimes doesn’t last. How I abandon wells that have gone dry, how I’ve got too much fucking experience for that.” Your grip on his jaw tightens. “Don’t you fucking dare. Don’t pity me, it wasn’t me. It was my sister, and a girl I trained with, and probably half the other women out there. It’s only common sense, nothing personal.”

“You don’t trust me, eh?”

“I don’t see the need. And don’t think I haven’t noticed you have an entire room you keep locked every time I come over.”

He looks guilty, and that’s not at all what you wanted, not what you expected. To have a locked room is not beyond the bounds of what you’re here for, after all.

“Don’t get hurt feelings,” you say. “It’s not my fault a woman can’t be both safe and sentimental at the same time.”

“She could try.”

“She doesn’t want to. You kill people, Alfie.”

“...Yeah.”

“Then there we are.” There’s something in his eyes you can’t read, and that’s a problem, that right, there, but if you can’t figure it out, you can’t fix it. You kiss him by way of a panacea, and then you get up and wander over to the kitchen to get a glass of water.

“Is it that simple?” he calls after you.

“It is.”

###  **IX. Rum Is For Pirates**

And it seems that way for another very good two weeks. You still stop by the bakery every now and again, but it’s rarer; mostly he picks you up at eight and returns you before midnight, and that’s a little less sleep for you but a lot more fun. Problems, despite his prediction, do not arise.

Until rum night. After much wild guessing, you’ve finally hit upon the distillery in the bakery basement, and he’s agreed to fill you with about as many samples of the product as you can bear, it being a Saturday night and neither of you heading to church Sunday.

“It’s shit, innit,” he says, pulling a face after his first drink.

“Then why are you having another?”

He shrugs, and grins, and you’re halfway to kissing that off his face when the phone rings.

He mutters his replies, again in Yiddish, and you’re idly contemplating the possibility of licking something off his shoulder blades. Not rum, whiskey maybe. But his voice rises in concern and lowers back into something steadier than usual, which you read as reassurance, and by the time he hangs up, you’ve got your shoes on.

“I can walk from here,” you say. It’s not a great time of night, but nobody’s going to touch you.

“No, I’m afraid you’re going to have to come with me,” he says.

“I’m not doing a thing for your business.”

“It’s closer to your business than mine.”

 

Which is how you end up knocking on the door of a crowded flat with a five year old girl jumping up and down shouting on the sofa and a twelve year old boy, face grave, answering the door.

“Hi,” you say. “I’m Vanessa.” You stick out your hand, which he shakes like he’s a fortysomething banker. It would be charming if the backdrop wasn’t so sad.

“I’m Joshua. Did Mr. Solomons send you?” he says.

“Yes, he just drove to get you some groceries.”

“The stores are all closed.”

“He’ll find a way.” Thankfully, this seems to satisfy the little man, and you don’t have to elaborate on what’s undoubtedly going to be a fair bit of theft. He steps aside and lets you in.

“How long has it been just you two?” you say.

“Two days.”

“What’s her name?”

“Tabitha. Tabby for short.”

“Alright.” You lock the door behind you, then squat in front of him. “Joshua, you’ve done a good job. We’re going to take care of this. Can you do something for me?”

“Maybe.”

God, the kid’s smart. Your chest aches. “Can you get some water for you and your sister?”

“Why?”

“Because dehydration always comes first.” You straighten.

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to have a look in the bedroom.”

“Don’t.”

“Love, someone’s going to have to do it. Or it’s going to make the whole flat smell very bad. It’s not going to go away.”

His face crumples. You squat down again and give him a hug, and presently the little girl has climbed down off the sofa to join in. She smells like piss but that’s understandable. Your dress was going to be a wreck after tonight anyway.

When they’re both done crying, you sit them down at the kitchen table for some water each, and then you venture into the bedroom. You were expecting a mother, but this is clearly more of a grandmother, hair gray, and not beginning to smell too much, yet. Eyes closed, thank God. You’ve not dealt with many bodies in your time, but it’s always twice as bad when the eyes are open.

Likely there’s some sort of culturally polite way to deal with this, but there are children waiting on you to get it over with, so you untuck the edges of the sheet from under the mattress and tie her up in the sheets, bundling pretty tightly.

Joshua doesn’t seem to like the silence much, so you end up talking loudly through the crack in the door, even as you start in on the bathroom with soap and a rag.

“Miss?”

“Yes, Joshua.”

“Who are you?”

“Vanessa.”

“Are you Mr. Solomon’s wife?”

“No, I’m a teacher.”

“I’ve never seen you at school.”

“There are other schools.”

He absorbs this.

“Miss?”

“Yes, Joshua.”

“Who is Mr. Solomons?”

You want to laugh. “I’m not sure, sometimes. I suppose he’s a baker. He likes rum. Maybe he’s a pirate.”

“Pirates need ships.”

“A pirate on land, then. He has the beard for it, right?”

“I guess.”

“How do you know him, Joshua?”

“He was there when Dad went to jail. Dad’s a murderer,” he says, like murderer is the same as florist or milkman.

You find yourself saying, “Oh,” politely, like you do to old friends declaring marriages you don’t approve of.

“Yeah, and he gave us a card with his phone number on it. It had a flower on it. It was pretty fancy.”

Just then, the door opens, and Alfie storms in in a flurry of jovial Yiddish and a mass of bags. By the time you emerge into the kitchen, the kids are stuffing their faces with makeshift sandwiches of bread and cheese. You wait until you’re quite close to him, then you lift onto your tiptoes and murmur in his ear: “Do you know where you’re taking her?”

“Yeah.”

“Then you should do it now.”

You cover Tabby’s eyes with one hand, but Joshua’s such a little man, he won’t let you, and you don’t have the heart to force him to look away. Anyways, when Alfie carries her out, all wrapped up in the sheets, she just looks like a bundle. You tied those knots tight.

The miracle is that Tabby actually likes taking baths, so that’s not so difficult, and then the food hits her and Joshua at about the same time.

“You didn’t have to touch the body,” he says, as you both watch them, curled up, asleep on the sofa.

“It was the work at hand.”

“I can have Ollie walk you home, if you want.”

“Ollie?”

“Tall, dark hair. You could bump into him while robbing his house and he’d apologize to you for it.”

“Oh, that one. No, it’s fine. There’s still laundry to do, and I know you’re shit at laundry.”

“I’ve done my own laundry for decades now, mate.”

“It’s a little sad that you’re so proud of it, Alfie.”

“I can handle this myself.”

“I know. But I’m here now, so I might as well.”

It’s several hours of work, but not without its peculiar rewards. While packing up the grandmother’s clothes, you even catch Alfie shining Joshua’s little shoes.

“Wot?” he says, as if you’ve accused him of something.

You just shake your head and get back to folding blouses.

After what feels like a month but is probably more like several hours, Judith shows up, and the house is clean and as childproofed as can be, you and Alfie both dozing in separate chairs.

You don’t even bother to explain, just lurch up out of the chair.

“Wait,” says a little voice. It’s Joshua, blinking sleepily up at the three of you. “Where are you going?”

You start forward, but Alfie’s closer, and he holds up a hand, so you let him take it. You watch as he kneels next to the sofa and starts talking, softly. You don’t understand the words, but you don’t have to. Joshua’s little face is earnest and rapt beneath the sleepiness.

“Hello,” Judith says to you, brightly.

“Hello.” You offer her a smile. You know this is all ridiculous, or maybe again that’s the sleep deprivation.

She reaches into her purse and produces a muffin.

“You’re a queen among women, Judith. An absolute queen.”

The muffin doesn’t last you nearly long enough; soon you find yourself sitting next to Alfie in the car, and nothing to do with your mouth. You think you might be supposed to say something, but you don’t know what it is. You’re not quite sure how to act. Because now you’re not just the foulmouthed teacher that doesn’t know when to stop, and he’s not just the violent baker that amasses power via killing and stealing in his spare time. You’re still all of that, but other things too, enough to make you people.

“Have we found a problem?” he says.

You shake your head. “It’s just different.”

Maybe it is a bit of a problem, because now that he’s more than a cock with various attractive qualities attached, he’s a man, and you’ve never known what to do with a man before, never having seriously tried.

He’s watching you. “You still want a drink?”

You look out the car window. The sky is beginning to lighten in the east, and all your body wants to do is sleep, but leaving him now feels like leaving something unfinished. “Why not?”

###  **X. High Sun**

You wake up to a lick on your face. “No.” You push away, but your hand meets fur, not skin, and--”Alfie!”

“Wot?” He ambles in from the kitchen, looking like he’s not even hungover, the bastard, already dressed, apple in hand.

“You had a dog this whole time and didn’t tell me?”

“Yeah.” He clucks at the little brown spaniel, which leaps off the bed and circles his feet, panting excitedly. “Want an apple?”

“No.” You sit up, swiping your hair out of your face. The first time you’ve slept in his bed, and you didn’t even fuck first. You’re not sure how to feel about that. “Is that what you kept all locked up in the room?”

“I have guns and papers and illegal shit in there. My neighbor takes the dog when you come over. But he had to go to work this morning.”

“Right.” You make it to the bathroom in time to throw up in the toilet, which helps, oddly enough. You wash yourself up, bath and all, and emerge in one of his shirts, partly because your dress is spoilt but partly because you’ve always wanted to. He demonstrates his appreciation for the sight first by handing over toast spread thick with butter, then by watching you eat with particularly avid eyes. You lick your fingers clean when you’re done.

“Alfie?”

“Mm?”

“You’re going to have to lock the dog in the bathroom for this part.”

He does.

 

You take your time unbuttoning the shirt while he rushes to get off the vest, the shirt, the trousers, the socks, it’s funny and then suddenly he’s crawling up the bed, sliding a hand up your thigh, and you forget what’s funny with his head between your legs, taking his time. He licks into you and palms your breasts and you’re not used to this, the odd, luxurious feeling of hardly moving at all, flexing a little under him, taking everything and giving nothing. But it’s on offer, so you take it.

He doesn’t make it easy on you, though. He usually knows when you’re close, because your nails leave crescents on his shoulders, or his hair gets a sharp tug, but this time he backs off even before that, slows down the pace, lapping at you in a way that’s nowhere close to satisfying. He reaches up and palms your breasts, but that’s not much use, either. You bite your lip and wait. Clearly, the man has a plan, and you’ll indulge him.

The plan turns out to be him touching you in every possible way that’s unsatisfactory: one finger slipping in, shallowly, a slight prickle of teeth dragging down your neck, two fingers in while he mouths at your nipples and that’s--oh that’s alright, that’s better, but the rhythm’s barely there and you’re this close to just shoving him off and taking care of yourself (as you’ve done twice now, on occasions when the frustration became too much), but then he ducks back down, starts sucking at your clit properly, and and you sigh a _yeah, like that_.

When he finally lets you come, you’re whimpering for it, hands clutching at the sheets, words lost to the pleasure, sight almost too. You look down, afterwards, and he’s got his head resting on your thigh, watching you with a pride that doesn’t annoy you as much as it used to. Doesn’t annoy you at all, actually.

“Come here,” you say.

He crawls up obligingly for the kiss, moans his encouragements when you feel him through his trousers. He breaks away entirely when you unbutton them and guide him into you. So much, so soon after your last orgasm, you can feel yourself twitching like mad, squirming into him, away from him, but you hold yourself to it because you want to see. And when you look up, yeah, there it is: the slightest of hesitation, buried under ten layers of his cock thinking for him, enough that he moves far too slowly to be giving anything to himself. There it is. You were right.

You push him off, clumsy still but determined, push him till you’ve got him on his back, where you want him, and you can mount him again, biting down on a _fuck_ at how much it all is, oversensitive yes but determined more than anything else. You roll against him once, give a shit-eating grin at his groan, and then start to ride him in earnest. “Come on,” you pant, when you’ve got your voice back enough to manage two syllables. You’re five strokes behind coming apart, but you’re holding on, you want to take him with you. “Fuck me,” and he looks up at you, trembling above him, with something like awe, and obeys.

 

When a wet washcloth has done its work and you’re side by side in the bed (another first) and the record player sings out some sweet contralto, he discovers that he likes to play with your hair, and you don’t see any point in stopping him.

“We could do this again,” he says.

“I was planning on it.”

“No, all of this. Breakfast, and the dog.”

“And scrubbing down floors at 3am?”

“I’ll try to keep the dead bodies out of it, love, but I can’t promise it’ll be all be sunshine if you stick around for more than three hours a week.”

Yeah, that’s fair. You should say no to the whole thing. But there’s worse things than a dog, some toast, an midday fuck. There’s worse things than sweet and savage, fingers sure on your thighs, on a trigger, on the handle of a broom. Where else are you gonna find a man that can play tenderness straight to a little boy, gentle and right, and then turn around and play tenderness twisted up to a threat too, rasping in a way that makes you wet? You would’ve been just fine with the cock alone, but there’s other things to consider, you see that now. You decide to let yourself consider them.

“I’ll think about it.”


End file.
